saboma/economy

Hundreds of dogs took to New York City's Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, September 26, 2009 to help the one million pets who may lose their homes to foreclosure, using the LuLu Leash, the world's only fully illuminated dog leash to highlight the cause.

The banks, now investment banks thanks to greed-driven deregulation that repealed the learned lessons of the past, were even more reckless than consumers and took speculative leverage to new heights. At the urging of Larry Summers and Goldman Sachs' CEO Henry Paulson, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bush administration went along with removing restrictions on debt leverage.

When the bubble burst, the extraordinary leverage threatened the financial system with collapse. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve stepped forward with no one knows how many trillions of dollars to â€oesave the financial system, which, of course, meant to save the greed-driven financial institutions that had caused the economic crisis that dispossessed ordinary Americans of half of their life savings.

The consumer has been chastened, but not the banks. Refreshed with the TARP $700 billion and the Federal Reserve's expanded balance sheet, banks are again behaving like hedge funds. Leveraged speculation is producing another bubble with the current stock market rally, which is not a sign of economic recovery but is the final savaging of Americans wealth by a few investment banks and their Washington friends. Goldman Sachs, rolling in profits, announced six figure bonuses to employees.

The rest of America is suffering terribly.

*I sincerely believe the information in this article because yesterday, an online clothing store voluntarily gave me a 250.00 credit card for clothing even though I have no interest in having a credit card of any kind and never applied for it. That action alone is an act of financhial desperation in and of itself.

Mark my word. Also, stay away from any and all credit debt. If you can't pay cash, then do without it. You don't need it. Plus that, you'll live.

The "Cash for Clunkers" program will be all done and over with, with most of the cars crushed, before the little guy realizes that the price of his used part just went up a whole lot.

Eggsactly!

GM has the imagination of a 2 year old given tax dollars to tinker with by the US government.

Related: abcnews.go.com/Business/Technology/wireStory [abcnews.go.com/Business/Technology/wireStory]

"Pinch pennies. Sell off unneeded assets and possessions. And raise as much cash as you can for emergencies and for your family's future."

Take the challenge and live as frugally as you can. It is freeing as well as a very smart thing to do.

Standard & Poor's has California's general obligation bonds rated "A" with CreditWatch with negative implications. Moody's has warned of a possible "multi-notch" downgrade in its "A2," sixth-highest investment grade credit rating of California's general obligation debt.



In a statement, Fitch said it cut its "A-" rating "based on the state's continued inability to achieve timely agreement on budgetary and cash flow solutions to its severe fiscal crisis.




California faces a $26.3 billion budget deficit for its fiscal year that began on July 1 and talks between Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers to balance the state's books are plodding along.

Ouch!

Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!
 I can recall hearing similar talk during the Vietnam War. "The village has to be destroyed in order to save it."
During the 1930 depression there was a huge real estate problem but no one had the nerve to consider tearing down houses. They did burn down wheat and corn fields in the south in effort to keep prices higher, but it didn't work.
 
How about if Washington DC mysteriously burns to the ground and all politicians hang by the neck.  Doing so would help the economy recover.

[and no, I'm not a terrorist in any sense of the word.]

This isn't just happening in California.  The sky-high foreclosure rate in California has wrecked families and battered the banks. But there's another casualty that isn't talked about as much; the neighborhoods. There are communities that have been blighted by vacant and abandoned homes.